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2005 Winner

Bestselling novelist, essayist and screenwriter, Judith Guest was a newspaper reporter and a teacher before she sold her first book. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Judith graduated from the University of Michigan with a bachelor's degree in education. 

Her unagented first novel, Ordinary People, was plucked from the slush pile and became a New York Times bestseller and went on to win the Janet Heidegger Kafka Award for best first novel. Her book was made into a movie that won six Academy Awards, including best picture. Ordinary People has sold close to ninety-thousand hardcover copies and over half a million paperback copies. 

Her novel Second Heaven was selected as one of School Library Journal's Best Books for Young Adults. Her mystery Killing Time in St. Cloud, written with novelist Rebecca Hill, won praises from Publishers Weekly for "Mingling a suspenseful plot with homely domestic details and a perfectly calibrated sense of atmosphere." Library Journal called her novel Errands, "True, touching, and highly recommended for all fiction collections."

In The Tarnished Eye, Judith writes a suspense novel based on a real-life string of murders. "This tightly paced, gripping thriller is imbued with substance, sensitivity and depth," says Publishers Weekly. Judith is working on a sequel to Second Heaven and a follow-up to The Tarnished Eye. 

Judith has also written several screenplays, one of which was based on a trio of short stories by Carol Bly and made into a movie called Rachel River. She and Rebecca Hill teach seminars on novel writing. She divides her time more or less equally between Minnesota and Michigan.

2004 Winner
Robert Vaughan

Born in Morley, Missouri, Robert Vaughan sold his first novel at the age of nineteen.  Since then, the award-winning author has written over 260 novels under his own name and 35 pseudonyms.  Averaging six sales per year, he has written in every genre except science fiction and horror. His book The Valkyrie Mandate was nominated for the Pulitzer, and his book, Andersonville, became a TNT mini-series and Emmy finalist. Winner of both SPUR and Porgie awards, Vaughan has twice hit #1 on the bestseller lists of the New York Times and Publisher's Weekly. He has written three stories for the TV series Law and Order, and one screenplay for The New Adventures of Robin Hood. In 1998 he was inducted into the Writers Hall of Fame in Springfield, Missouri, and is now the proud owner of a B-17 engine cylinder-head—a gift from a fan who enjoyed Vaughan's book, Portals of Hell. Recent titles include In Honored Glory, A Time For Killing, and The Wild, Wild West.  His latest books are Trailback (May 2003) from Pinnacle Books, Whose Voice the Water Heard: A WWII Novel (June 2003) from Thomas Nelson, The Lawmen (Sept 2003) from Pinnacle Books, and Christmas Past: When the Power of Love Reaches Across Time (Oct 2003) from Thomas Nelson.

Vaughan is a frequent speaker at seminars and at high schools and colleges. He has also hosted three television talk shows: Eyewitness Magazine, on WAVY TV in Portsmouth, Virginia, Tidewater A.M., on WHBQ TV in Hampton, Virginia, and This Week in Books on the TEMPO Cable Television Network. In addition, he hosted a cooking show at Phoenix at Mid-day on KHPO TV in Phoenix, Arizona.

A retired military officer with tours in Vietnam, Korea, and Germany, Vaughan has received the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. Vaughan and his wife, Ruth, live in Gulf Shores, Alabama, where he is actively involved as a lay minister at Holy Spirit Episcopal Church.